A Trip to the Moon

History, Artemis, and Humanity’s Space Junk

There is something almost innocent, at first glance, about Georges Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon. The painted sets, the theatrical gestures, the famous image of the capsule lodged in the eye of the moon — all of it feels whimsical, handmade, full of wonder. It bears the marks of ingenuity in their freshest form. Cinema is still young. Imagination is learning what machinery can do. Human beings are discovering that they can build not only devices, but dreams.

And yet, to watch the film closely is to feel a disturbance beneath the delight.

The voyage is not simply a journey. It is an invasion. The moon is not approached with humility or reverence, but penetrated, subdued, and turned into a stage for conquest. The lunar beings are encountered not as neighbors in wonder but as hostile “natives,” there to be struck, shattered, and overcome. The travelers return not merely with experience, but with a captive and a triumphal procession. What looks at first like fantasy reveals itself as a little parable of empire.

That is why the film still matters. It is not only an early science-fiction spectacle. It is an early warning.

Read the full essay at PeaceGrooves.

Song – Waiting on my Rising

Lyrics (Music forthcoming)

Waiting on My Rising

Another Easter Sunday.
Another stone rolled away.
The world is still the same as it was yesterday.
My mind’s still wearing grave clothes.
My body’s still in pain.
We’re under a flood warning.
There’s been so much rain.

I saw a car trapped in the waters,
stranded just like me.
I can’t seem to push on through
this frantic futility.

Waiting on my rising.
For the waters to recede.
Lost beneath the surface.
Trying not to breathe.

I spent Holy Week in the basement.
Hid from the sirens warning cry.
Of hail and twisted lightning
falling from the sky.
I was wide awake in the garden
but it did no good.
Love betrayed by kiss.
Nailed to bloody wood.

I drew my blade and struck out
in my raging impotence.
But fearful Anger only harms the innocent.

Waiting on my rising.
Like a violent metallic seed.
Body buried in the graveyard
of my complicity.

Bridge
All my offerings are not enough
to burn the shame from my soul.
The mercy seat is broken.
Good news is growing old.
I’m tired of trying to be holy.
I just want to be made whole.

I tried to cling to you in the garden.
But you told me to let you go.
There must be something I’m not grasping.
Some truth I don’t know.

Waiting on my rising.
For some place to begin again.
For someone to pull death’s stinger
out of my skin.

Waiting, waiting, waiting on my rising.

He spent almost a week trying to get under my skin. I ignored it and set boundaries. I didn't change him, the guy changed himself.

He's not broken. He just never had a safe place to reflect on those behaviours.

#Boundaries #MentalHealth #Healing #HumanNature #PersonalGrowth